Touched by the Gods

I realized the other day that I was overthinking things with regard to discovering and restoring the gods in Seekers of Lore.

My initial expectation was that clerics were cultists, followers of specific gods, since that’s how I’ve run them for a couple of decades now… but for Seekers of Lore that would cause some problems.

Instead, clerics are godspeakers. They don’t necessarily worship any particular god, but speak for and to all the gods. The core cleric spell list will be fairly small to start.

Over time, though, most clerics might be expected to form relationships with various groups, gods, and other entities. It might be worth joining with the Sons of the Wolf because it could lead to an allegiance and covenant with Harual, Lord of Wolves (and potentially skinshifting abilities).

This is not limited to clerics. Clerics might be the only ones who can really take advantage of expanding clerical spell knowledge (which they probably take with them if they leave — I like the idea of apostate priests), but characters of other classes can easily be acceptable to form covenants with greater powers. In this case rangers could be an excellent match, fighters and rogues less so, but even wizards and paladins could fit.

The idea of a werewolf(ish) paladin hunting the unrighteous through the snow-shrouded forest, calling on his lupine brethren to assist, is kind of cool to me.

Under this model “cleric” becomes a core set of abilities and training. This can be expanded on by exploring and discovering lost knowledge, just as with other characters, and other characters can benefit from the abilities to be gained by discovering a lost god or supporting them.

I’m interested myself in how this will turn out… once I finish a couple other things.

The wolf-paladin was kind of spawned by a book my Mike Stackpole, Talion: Revenant. The Talions are, after a fashion, the protectors of civilization — in that they do what they can to make sure the kingdoms stay civilized, not so much to do with holding back hordes of monsters. There are several branches to the Talions, including one called the Justices. A Justice is sort of a fantasy Judge Dredd in that he is tasked with bringing in criminals or dealing with dangerous situations as he sees fit and needful. They are typically specifically tasked, but given rather a great deal of latitude in how the deal with their problems.

The quality of the Justices varies a fair bit, the main character of the book is fairly paladinish (many of the more conventional Talions see him as a bit of an upstart and bad influence, he leans more toward ‘good’ than ‘lawful’ as it were). After a certain point, individual Justices tend to develop in different ways. I can pretty easily see one following a path like this — he hunts criminals and other threats to civilization, being able to take on wolf form could be useful.

(And incidentally ties into a minor point about the character, now that I think about it.)

Debatable for some Links, but regarding the Hero of Light in Twilight Princess, at least, I’d say definitely:

Sword and board? Check.

Steed that can be instantly summoned out of nowhere? Check.

Blessed with divine power? Check.

Detect evil? I assume this is represented by the change in background music when an enemy is near ;-)

Smite evil? A lot of monsters catch the sharp end of this; the Master Sword is even known as the “sword of evil’s bane” in this game.

Immune to fear? Spends a large fraction of the game fighting eldritch abominations without batting an eyelid, one of which is bigger than a house village. Also quite a few death-defying leaps over abyssal holes or lava pits* (at one stage both at the same time) which made me feel nervous just watching!

And he’s definitely some sort of D&D character, because he has a small mountain of magic items for which he completely ignores encumbrance. :-)

{* The lava death animation in Twilight Princess is pure high-octane nightmare fuel}